


If Anything Happens

by stanimal



Category: Black Panther (2018), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: A tiny bit of smut, AU, Aged-Up Character(s), Aged-up Shuri, Angst and Fluff and Smut, Bucky Barnes Feels, Challenge Day Feels, Don’t know how old she is exactly in this one, F/M, Fluff, Just a smidge of Infinity War in there somewhere, Queen Shuri, White Wolf - Freeform, so don’t ask, that should help give it away if you still need answers, winterprincess
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-03
Updated: 2018-06-03
Packaged: 2019-05-17 15:05:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,957
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14834561
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stanimal/pseuds/stanimal
Summary: Bucky/Shuri on the morning of a Challenge Day





	If Anything Happens

**Author's Note:**

  * For [](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts).



> A repost from a series of deleted works. Please forgive my ghosting, it happens from time to time. 
> 
> Bear with me as I slowly ease my small Shuri/Bucky contributions back into the pot.
> 
> Much love..

Shuri and Bucky were lying awake next to each other in her bed at the palace one morning.  
  
He was shirtless, propped up by an excessive amount of pillows against the backboard. Shuri was tucked inside the fleshy arm, tracing her fingers mindlessly across the other smooth, hairless, metal one. Taking notice of how heavily decorated it was with her fingerprints from the night before. A bare, chocolatey leg was draped over his thigh and winding its way around in a downward spiral, as if claiming ownership of the large appendage.  
  
They had grown less and less discrete over the past year since the start of their secret bond. Since they had plummeted, hand-in-hand, out of the speeding plane. Cutting the safety nets that had been built for so many years since the day he first arrived, and free-falling into the wide open troposphere of forbidden territory. They were in love.

It was almost a widely known fact, since Bucky pretty much followed her around wherever she went. He had even supplanted the Dora Milaje, standing in as security for Shuri on most occasions. It started off as a debt he could never repay.. something he felt was the least he could do. Now, it was her decision as queen, even though she knew just as well as he did, that she never really needed him for that.

 

Both of their eyes were glazed over. Staring off into two separate distances. Trying to ignore the demanding, persistent pull of time. Trying to not think about the inevitable events that were soon to take place.

  
It was challenge day.

  
  
They both had felt it coming for a long while now. It would be Shuri’s second time dueling for the throne since her brother died. The council members, as well as other clan leaders, had now run completely out of patience with the young queen’s refusal to court with any suitors, and her shameless disdain for tradition.

Flirting. Sometimes publicly, sometimes in broad daylight.. with that one-armed white man. That strange, ageless, rugged ex-assassin who had resided in Wakanda long enough to earn his African moniker.. who was eventually referred to by almost everyone that knew him as “ _Ingcuka_.”  
  
It was an insult in the sharpest, acutest manner to a nation that had for centuries prided themselves on never having been colonized. Their love was a deeper, more hurtful kind of treason. And Bucky and Shuri had run out of time.  
  
  
  
  
  
“I should be there..” Bucky broke the silence. And he was right, although he had been struggling with the idea of anyone laying hands on the woman beside him. The woman he fought for and wouldn’t think twice about dying for. He felt as if it was all his fault in the first place. But Shuri would never allow him to get away with saying that.  
  
“Why? I’ll be right back,” she quipped.  
  
“Shuri,” Bucky couldn’t shake his seriousness yet, “if anything happens..” Bucky eyes remained fixed on something nonspecific in front of him. “Your guards won’t be able to hold me back.”

“Hey, I’m supposed to get hurt, remember??” Shuri peeled an ear off of his chest and side-eyed him playfully.  
  
“Why are you so worried about me anyway?”  
  
“I’m not worried, it’s just..” he paused to try to detangle his thoughts.  
  
“It’s just.. what??” Shuri suddenly stiffened. Raising her upper body and supporting it with one arm to get a better look at him. To pry the honesty out from behind his eyes.

Bucky couldn’t answer. He sighed with frustration before looking at the window.  
  
“You think I’ll lose?” Her eyes narrowed at him.  
  
“No, that’s not what I..” Bucky groaned.  
  
“When you said you ‘should be there’, I thought you meant to be there for me.. to SUPPORT me. To root for me. Not because I needed your help!”  
  
“Shuri, listen..”  
  
“No, you listen to ME.” She had fully sat upright now. “I don’t need your fucking protection, James!! I can handle myself you know.”  
  
“I know you don’t. And I know you can..” Bucky sighed and sat up too, trying to keep his calm amidst the thunderstorm brewing in front of him.  
  
“Then you COULD show a little confidence in me right now.” She turned her hips at this, tugging both legs from underneath the sheets. Away from him.  
  
Bucky instantly made himself parallel to her. Not wishing her to think for one moment, that he thought any less of her than fully capable of any and everything she set her precious mind to.  
  
“Shuri, I’d be lying if I told you that I wasn’t scared. Scared of losing you..” he instantly grimaced, knowing that his words weren’t doing anything to make her any less pissed off at him. He tried looking her in the eyes, but hers only deflected. Turning her chin from him.  
  
“..but it has nothing to do with my confidence in you.”  
  
“Then what?” She quickly snapped back towards his subtle frown. Her dark eyes pleading with him. A breathtaking mixture of heartbreak and indignation on her face that could only look so beautiful on her, and her alone.  
  
  
  
“What are you so afraid of, James?”  
  
  
  
After giving him the space and opportunity for a few moments, she then decisively grabbed her beads from the nightstand and snapped them on. The determination to prove him (and his wavering faith) wrong was now set in motion like a nuclear warhead launch.  
  
“Come or don’t come,” she said flipping her torso over headlong. She hastily gathered all the braids she could, raking them into a pile on top of her head.  
  
“I really don’t care..” she muttered as she sat up, twisting a bun around the spot where she gathered, and tucking the ends of the braids underneath a fold at the base.  
  
“I’m leaving to go fulfill my duty as warrior and queen. Whether or not you think I have what it takes to win is of no importance to me,” She seethed, trying desperately to make that last part sound like the truth.  
  
She got from the bed with these words and started for the bathroom. Then, an unexpected grasp at her hand held her back.  
  
  
  
“Marry me.”  
  
  
  
Shuri froze on the peak of a mountain in her chest. The inhale was caught..  in her throat.  
  
  
How selfish.  
  
How dare he turn what should have been a more thoroughly planned and thought out question into a statement. A command? Bucky mentally shunned himself at the sheer audacity of it. He didn’t even have a respectably poised ring in front of her like he’d imagined himself doing a million times in his head. If she would’ve turned to slap him, he would’ve expected it.  
  
And even if it were a question.. how dare he ask anything of her at all??  
  
How dare he think of himself at a time like this? When she needed him the most.  
  
Why would he ever make her feel, even if unintentionally, like she needed to make some sort of choice between belonging to someone and the brilliant destiny that lied waiting for her in the future?  
  
Honestly, all that James Buchanan Barnes could focus on, in that moment, was that “if anything happens” part that he failed terribly at clarifying earlier.  
  
It was the infinite amount of variables of what could happen. The sobering absence of any guarantees of life.  
  
In an instant, a dirty move, a slip off an edge, a wormhole vomiting out alien beasts, or a simple snap of someone’s fingers somewhere in some alternative universe.. could snatch their very existences away from them. Without warning. Without even the dignity of pain or suffering. Just vanish.  
  
He thought he'd never see her again on that day, battling Thanos’ army at Wakanda. He didn’t want to waste another minute, for he knew that not another minute.. and most certainly not another _resurrection_ was promised to him. He could not bear the thought of everything disintegrating into nothing before asking her to be his forever. As pointless, selfish and old-fashioned as it seemed.  
  
But.. How dare he be crazy enough dream of possessing her in any way, shape or form?  
  
Although..  
  
  
  
There was this one, small beating thing in her chest that he always did.  
  
  
  
Shuri finally turned around and faced him with eyes brimming.  
  
“Yes.”  
  
She couldn’t explain herself. There was no line of reasoning that could justify her response. In what universe could the Black Panther, Queen of Wakanda, and Mrs. Barnes all coexist within her??  
  
But at the moment, she didn’t care. She’d have to figure it out later.  
  
She all but pounced on him, climbing onto a confused Bucky’s lap.  
  
“Yes,” she reiterated. She looped her arms over his shoulders.  
  
“Yes?” His steel blue eyes dilated, reflecting the sunlight. They focused like lasers into her own. They asked without words if she was sure that she heard him correctly.  
  
“YES,” this time the word came out her mouth with a smile and a shaky breath.  
  
She pressed into him and kissed him as sweetly as ever. Bucky nearly squeezed the life out of her. Laughter bubbled up out of her throat instead.  
  
  
  
What followed next was more of a vow than a goodbye, just in case the world might actually come to an end soon..  
  
  
  
Within minutes, their clothes were shed and cast to the side of the bed. Shuri was rolling her hips, riding him steadily while Bucky guided her shape with his hands. He brushed kisses against her collarbone. She impulsively pushed him onto his back. Bucky smiled. The poultice of the heart-shaped herb had not been removed yet. It pulsed rapidly like fire through her veins. Shining with perspiration, she squeezed him with her inner walls, aggressively volleying her hips up and down on his slick, pulsing shaft.  
  
They were making out this way, until Bucky bridged her, rolling her over and pinning her down. He slipped his hand underneath her, between the warm, silky skin of her rear and the cool textile sheets. He bit and bruised her lips as he kissed her. Going in as deep as he could. Bottoming out with each controlled thrust until he lost his head. Sinking his teeth in and devouring his meal.

The one-word answer she had given him earlier was the same word she began crying loudly until she reached her peak, and Bucky could only answer with her name. Hot and ragged. A growling prayer from deep down inside his belly.

The familiar warm buzz began to radiate, and then dance like electricity through them as they came. Together. If Shuri had been looking, she might've caught a single, shed tear escape from Bucky's tight eyes. Vibrations and white noise clenched their bodies into one tangled breathing thing, as time had made an exception just this once.. for them. And only for them.

 

~~~

  
The sun was a lot higher in the Wakandan sky before two hard knocks bellowed from the ground outside the door. A final call to leave from Okoye’s staff in the hallway.

Shuri was finishing up fastening her sleek battle armor, standing in the entryway of her suite. A calm gratification tipped its chin back up to her as she glanced at the mirror one last time. She took her weapons to leave. Bucky had strapped his boots on by the bed.  
  
“Shuri,” He whispered her name before she reached her hand to swipe her beads at the access panel of the door. She stopped to look at him.  
  
“Go win.”  
  
A tiny dimple carved its way into one of her cheeks.  
  
“I already have,” she said winking at him. Then she waved her hand, the doors hissed open, and she left the room.


End file.
